Announcement: Cartoon Movement joins AI-free newsrooms campaign of Molly Crabapple

Cartoon by Stellina Chen

Good morning, 

This is Emanuele Del Rosso, political cartoonist and editor of the international syndication and cartoonists collective platform Cartoon Movement (some of you know me for my role at the European Press Prize as well). 

I am reaching out to you to let you know that Cartoon Movement joined the campaign for AI-free newsrooms launched by the renowned artist Molly Crabapple and the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting. 

The work of illustrators and political cartoonists is in jeopardy because of the uncontrolled use of AI-powered tools in newsrooms all around the world. AI seems to be a good substitute for human-made art, but it is not: it doesn't convey any artistic message, it strips artists, writers, and authors of their livelihood, to produce what are only simulacra of artistic products, and it must be fed with millions of images or real art that most of the time is under copyright. You can read the open letter Molly wrote, here. 

I know all of you work for high-quality media, that value ownership and authorship of what you publish. Therefore I am asking you to give resonance to this campaign, to undersign - if you will - Molly's manifesto and to ask your publication to show its position using, in the footer of their websites, the label attached to this email, linking it to our post or to the original one. Readers have to know what they are seeing and reading is not produced by some cold machine, but it is the work of dedicated and passionate professionals. Ultimately, I am sure, newspapers will profit from being openly AI-free. 

I hope this will interest you, and I want to close with a cartoon by my fellow cartoonist Stellina Chen. This comes for free to your outlet, if you will want to use it! 

Thanks, 

Emanuele 

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Reported by Francisco Puñal.